Izeinwinter comments on Polling Thread - Less Wrong

12 Post author: Gunnar_Zarncke 22 January 2014 09:14PM

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Comment author: satt 23 January 2014 02:28:32AM 7 points [-]

In the spirit of crude empiricism, I'll give it a go anyway and see what happens.

Poll: what probabilities do you assign to the following statements?

Men generally have a larger variance than women in most traits.

Because of genetic differences between men & women, men generally have a larger variance than women in most traits.

Men vary more in intelligence than women.

Because of genetic differences between men & women, men vary more in intelligence than women.

Men vary more in intelligence than women, and that contributes non-negligibly to gender imbalance in the sciences.

Because of genetic differences between men & women, men vary more in intelligence than women, and that genetically-driven difference in variance contributes non-negligibly to gender imbalance in the sciences.

Submitting...

Comment author: Izeinwinter 24 January 2014 09:36:31PM 3 points [-]

"Too much Patriarchy bullshit in the data to tell".

There are very strong indicators that discrimination is going to hurt your career prospects in the sciences quite badly if you happen to be in possession of two X chromosomes. Number of widely cited papers needed in order to be awarded tenure, pay at a given level of qualifications, ect.. And even if you have not read those studies, the fact that this happens is blatantly obvious to anyone that is not both male and fairly oblivious.

This is quite sufficient to explain the disparity all on its own. Any underlying "biology" is utterly swamped in significance by this.

Also, the balance of probability is that any given woman you encounter in the sciences is at least one out of smarter, more stubborn or just flat out much harder working than her stature in the field would indicate. Often all 3. Getting anywhere against the weight of discrimination and discouragement requires you to be an outlier to start with.

Comment author: Jack 26 January 2014 09:35:24AM 3 points [-]

Does Patriarchy explain the left tail too?

Comment author: Izeinwinter 26 January 2014 10:47:58AM 1 point [-]

You mean the bit where boys are more likely to get into academic trouble ect? Heck yes. dont mistake patriarchy for a system that actually helps men - it is a social pathology and not kind to either gender. At all. It contains ideas about identity and status that can and will fuck you. The bad boy trying to be cool by blowing of class and acting out against authority didn't come up with that set of behaviors de novo.

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